Mission

The mission of the National Council on School Facilities is to support states in their varied roles and responsibilities for the delivery of safe, healthy, and educationally appropriate public school facilities that are sustainable and fiscally sound.

Founding Principles

National Council on School Facilities is founded on the following guiding principles, which reflect the changing nature of the demands on today’s schools and the need for educational facility infrastructure to support these demands:

High-quality school district facilities support student learning, effective teaching, and efficient operations and administration.

All of our nation’s school facilities should be healthy, safe, sustainable, affordable, accessible to the community, and a source of civic pride.

The states play a vital role in support of the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of high-quality school buildings and grounds.

History of the Council

In 2006, state PK-12 public school facilities directors began meeting to exchange information on state-level policy and practice concerning PK-12 infrastructure. In 2010, the ad-hoc committee began planning a new nonprofit organization focused on state roles and responsibilities for PK-12 public infrastructure. The 21st Century School Fund, a long-standing advocate for high-quality public school facilities, received a grant from the Advancement Project to provide support to the ad-hoc committee of school facilities directors in order to help plan and launch the Council. As a result of a year-long feasibility-study process involving the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Missouri, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, representatives from ten states came together on December 2, 2012 to form the National Council on School Facilities.

Research the Conditions of Our Nation's School Infrastructure

The 2016 State of the Schools Report provides a state and national analysis of 20 years of maintenance and operations spending and capital construction investments on our nation's public school facilities. Aditionally, an infographic was created to visually present the nation's PK-12 school infrastructure conditions.